Evan had been missing for two weeks, and the whole country knew it. News anchors repeated his name every hour, the same tired faces in the same tired reports. "6-year-old Evan Miller vanished without a trace," they said. But those words meant little after a while. For his parents, for the investigators, for everyone involved, there was no clarity. Nothing made sense.
Evan had been playing outside when he disappeared. The day had been hot, the sun relentless in a cloudless sky. His mother, Angela, had been inside, folding laundry when she first noticed the silence. The backyard was empty, save for the toys scattered across the grass. A ball rolled aimlessly, the last sign of life before everything went wrong. At first, she thought he was hiding—Evan had always liked to play games like that—but the minutes stretched into an hour. Her voice cracked when she called his name.
The police arrived swiftly, but they found nothing. No signs of a struggle, no footprints leading away from the house, no broken gates or windows. Just an empty yard.
The search expanded quickly. Neighbors, volunteers, and even the police combed the area. The woods behind the house, the nearby creek, the playground on the other side of the street—all of it was searched. No evidence. No clue. No nothing.
Angela couldn't believe it. She couldn't accept it. She stayed up every night, staring at the door, hoping for the sound of Evan's small feet running across the floor, his voice calling out to her. But he never came back.
The news had its theories: an abduction, a freak accident, maybe even a wild animal attack. But all of them felt hollow. Evan was just gone. There was no reason, no explanation, and no one had seen anything. It was as if the boy had just ceased to exist.
The local police couldn't get any leads. The FBI got involved. They brought in search dogs, helicopters, infrared cameras, everything. But the results were always the same. Nothing.
The first strange thing happened after the third night of searching. The police found something in the woods. At first, they thought it was a jacket, something Evan might've worn. But when they approached it, they realized it wasn't a jacket at all. It was just fabric—shredded, twisted, and crumpled into a ball. There was no blood, no sign of Evan.
They called it a "freak accident," maybe a wild animal dragging something into the woods. But no one believed that. Nothing fit. Not the fabric, not the shredded nature of it.
Then there were the marks on the trees. A week into the search, a group of officers found deep, jagged scratches on the bark of several trees. It was as if something had dragged its claws across them. But there was no animal known to leave marks like that, nothing they could trace.
The oddities began piling up. People talked. Some said they'd heard a voice calling for help in the woods. Others mentioned seeing a strange, dark figure moving in the trees. But every time they tried to investigate, it was gone.
Angela started losing track of time. The days blurred together. She spent her nights staring out the windows, hoping to see Evan standing there, his big brown eyes wide with confusion. The desperation gnawed at her, twisting in her chest. She stopped talking to people. She stopped eating. The only thing that kept her moving was the search for her son.
A week after the first reports of the strange sightings, Angela received an anonymous tip. "Look at the house," it said. It was a cryptic message, unsigned, sent through a burner phone. She couldn't make sense of it. But something about it felt real. She felt it deep in her gut. Someone knew something.
She drove back to the house, returning after a long day of searches. The house was quiet, the sun setting behind it. The door was slightly ajar. Angela hesitated, then pushed it open. The inside smelled of dust and stale air. The floors creaked beneath her feet.
There, in the hallway, she saw it. A smear of something red across the floor. It was faint, but it was there. Blood.
Her heart skipped a beat. She knelt down and touched it. Cold. Dry. It didn't feel right. This wasn't from Evan. This wasn't from anything natural.
The red smear led her to the basement. The door was open, and it looked like someone had been down there. She didn't know why she went, but she did.
The basement was dark. She grabbed a flashlight from the wall and flicked it on. The beam cut through the darkness, revealing something that made her stomach twist.
In the corner of the room was a pile of clothes, too many for just one person. They were stacked in a messy heap, but there was no sign of who they belonged to. Angela walked closer. Her eyes widened. There was something odd about the fabric, something wrong.
When she reached out to touch it, the flashlight went out. The room plunged into darkness.
She froze, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. A chill filled the air, the kind that made her skin crawl. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something. A shadow. It was moving. But there was no one else there.
Angela's breath caught in her throat. Her mind raced.
Was this it? Was this the answer? Was this some kind of sick joke, or was it real?
She backed up slowly, trying to keep calm, but the sound of footsteps behind her made her stop.
Someone was there. Someone was in the basement with her.
She whipped around, her heart pounding in her chest. The beam of the flashlight flickered back to life, but there was nothing there.
Just the clothes. The clothes and the dark.
The sound of a door creaking open echoed through the silence. Angela froze again. The basement door had swung open on its own. She could hear something now, breathing, slow and deep.
She turned her head.
It wasn't Evan.
It wasn't anyone she recognized.
The figure that stood in the doorway was tall, thin, and covered in darkness. Its face was obscured, like a void. There were no eyes, no mouth, no features at all. It was just a shape, moving as if it was part of the darkness itself.
Angela's chest tightened. Her legs felt weak. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe.
The figure took a step forward. Then another.
Angela turned and ran. She didn't think, didn't care about anything anymore. She ran up the stairs and out of the house, slamming the door behind her.
But she was already too late.
The moment she stepped outside, the darkness followed.
It had been there the whole time. It had been inside her house. It had been watching. Waiting.
The news reports the next day said nothing about the strange events that had happened to Angela. They said nothing about the marks on the trees or the dark figure. They reported that the search for Evan Miller was officially over. His body had never been found, and neither had any other clues.
But Angela knew. She knew what had taken him. She knew what she had seen.
And it had come for her.